The Bharatiya Janata Party won all the Assembly constituency seats in Pauri district in the Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha election 2017.
This victory of the BJP has created political history as in the case of the Pauri reserved constituency, which the BJP has won for the first time since the creation of Uttarakhand state. The clean sweep by the BJP in all six assembly seats in Pauri district is being attributed to the influence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the political acumen of the BJP national president Amit Shah. The back bone of the thumping majority of the party was the affect of Modi on women and youth voters including the Dalit and minority communities who played an important part in deciding the poll results with the belief that “voting for Modi would help bring about the desired development”. The Congress loss is being attributed to the anti-incumbency factor exacerbated by corruption and the lack of effective work for development on the ground, according to the general view held by the public here.
It is pertinent to mention here that the BJP and Congress party had three assembly seats each in the 2012 assembly election in Pauri district, but in the 2017 election BJP won all six assembly seats. The high profile assembly constituencies in the district -- Kotdwar, Yamkeshwar and Chaubattakhal saw the BJP candidates in these constituencies winning by a considerable margin.In all constituencies except Yamkeshwar, the BJP candidates defeated their nearest rivals Congress candidates while in the Yamkeshwar constituency the BJP candidate defeated the a rebel Congress member contesting as an independent candidate.
In Pauri constituency reserved seat BJP candidate Mukesh Koli defeated nearest rival and Congress candidate Naval Kishore by 7030 votes in what was being viewed as a nine-cornered contest. Mukesh Koli got 26469 votes but Naval Kishore managed only 19439 votes.This is the first time a BJP candidate won from this seat. In the high profile Kotdwar constituency, BJP candidate Harak Singh Rawat defeated Congress candidate cabinet Minister Surendra Singh Negi by a big margin of 11,318 votes. BJP got 39859 votes while only 28541 votes were cast in favour of the Congress candidate. Harak Singh Rawat has never lost any assembly election in Uttarakhand yet. He won twice from the lansdowne seat, then won from Rudraprayag seat. In Yamkeshwar seat BJP candidate Ritu Bhushan Khanduri defeated Independent candidate Renu Bisht, a Congress rebel by 8962 votes.The Congress candidate Shailendra Rawat, who had, after not getting ticket from the BJP for Kotdwar seat, resigned from BJP and joined Congress, managed to secure third place. The BJP got 19,671 votes while Independent Renu Bisht managed to secure 10689 votes followed by the Congress candidate who secured 10283 votes. Khanduri won the election in her debut attempt. In the Chaubattakhal constituency seat BJP Satpal Maharaj defeated Congress candidate Raj Pal Singh by 7354 votes. Satpal Maharaj got 20921 votes while Congress candidate got 13567 votes in the contest involving 16 candidates. Despite the rebel BJP candidate Kavindra Estwal, BJP’s Satpal Maharaj showed his supremacy.
In the lansdowne constituency, the sitting MlA and BJP candidate Dalip Singh Rawat defeated Congress candidate and former cabinet minister TPS Rawat by the margin of 6,475 votes. The BJP candidate got 22,246 votes while the Congress got 15,771 votes. In the Srinagar assembly constituency seat, the BJP candidate Dhan Singh Rawat defeated Congress candidate and sitting MlA Ganesh Godiyal by 8,696 votes. The rebel BJP candidate Mohan Kala managed to secure 4,854 votes to gain third position. The BJP candidate secured 30816 votes, while the Congress candidate managed to secure 22,118 votes. In all the six constituencies of the Pauri district, a total of 1417 votes were disqualified and 3325 voters used the option of None Of The Above (NOTA).